o who could have foretold that the heart grows old
by verity candor
Summary: The James of her memory is eternally six years old - It's a memory that bears almost no resemblance to the dark-eyed stranger next to her.


_o who could have foretold  
>that the heart grows old? <em>

Lucy Weasley is nothing special.

Brown hair, stubborn curls, and blue eyes - not sapphire pools, not starry skies, just blueblueblue.

By the summer she turns twenty-one, Lucy Weasley hasn't felt beautiful in years - not since Hadrian Willoughby whispered the words in her nineteen-year-old ear.

In the dimly-lit little bar, with Sascha outshining her and the lights showing off her dark circles and crooked eyeliner, Lucy feels as ragged and dirty as the glass she's drinking from.

Sascha's swirl of boys is as familiar as the dull feeling in her chest, and the pale halo of skin where a ring rested till two months ago, and, at this pint, Lucy's not even looking for comfort at the bottom of her glass - just some peace. Just some quiet.

When the stool next to hers is filled up, she barely notices - not until a sudden voice says "Can I buy you a drink?"

She turns to face a wicked grin - a puckish sparkle in his eyes that's terribly familiar and, somehow, still belongs to a complete stranger.

The James of her memory is eternally six years old - wearing his dad's robes and a pair of broken glasses, gallivanting around the lawn at Cousin Victoire's thirteenth birthday, pretending to be Harry Potter fighting off a dragon. It's a memory that bears almost no resemblance to the dark-eyed stranger next to her - with his broad shoulders, the cut-glass sharpness of his cheekbones, the cheeky curl of his smile - but it's still there, though, an irrefutable _Jamesness_ about him that makes Lucy whip out a "No, you can't." with a terrible rush of recognition and a pointed sharpness to her words.

He blinks in surprise - and Lucy's sure that this is when he recognizes her - finally connects the blue of her eyes to the lonely blue-eyed cousin - to Uncle Percy's daughter who stopped coming to see her Weasley cousins - but then that mischievous smile swoops back up and he says, "Oh, hell, Lucy - just one drink?"

Lucy's sharp-edged, like lace cut with obsidian, and she shoots him a deadly look - the look a teacher would shoot a misbehaving student, an older sister a bothersome sibling. "Don't you dare." she hisses, "Don't say anything. Nothing at all." And, with that, Lucy floods out into the uncharted rains and wild-eyed streets of New York.

Sascha is disapproving in the midst of her amusement, hinting at the open sore that is Hadrian and a two-year long engagement, at _moving on_, at _how cute was he_? - at _give him a chance, _at _try again_ - _That's not it _Lucy almost says. _He's my cousin _- but the words hang poised like silk on her tongue. All Lucy offers is silence.

Sascha offers James Lucy's address, though - and when the knock comes on her door at midnight, Lucy's only slightly surprised to see him towering over her.

"Haven't seen you in a while." He says, leaning against the door.

"What do you think you're doing?" Lucy mutters.

"Trying to talk to a pretty girl." he shoots back with a lazy smile. Behind the ice-cold tightening of her stomach, Lucy's (_afraid_) very aware of how far James' casual confidence and silver smile must take him.

"I'm _not_ just a pretty girl - "

"Pretty woman?" he offers, tranquilly.

"I'm your cousin." she says. In her mind, it's the clanging bell of the argument - the words ripple and dance, weaving their way into the fabric of her world.

James leans in close.

"So?" he whispers.

And there it is - that little spark, those little cinders of some secret only James knows. "This isn't England, Lucy." he says. "Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows who I am. We're like muggle superheroes. _Secret identities._" That impish smile, once more - Lucy's learning to read James Potter all over again.

"This isn't funny." she insists, angrily. "We're _cousins_."

James leans even closer - her vision is swallowed by the thin corner of his jaw and the rough triangle of hair he missed while shaving as he murmurs

"I've already forgotten."

into her ear.

The words are a shimmering little shock down her spine - Lucy would forget them if she could, but they hang crimson, apple-red, over Lucy's nights - a little secret, like a blue ribbon in her hair, that she tries _so, so_ hard to forget when James comes back the next night (chocolates), or the next night (roses), or the night she finally lets him in for a cup of tea, or the many nights afterwards, when she rediscovers, over mugs of tea and shared memories, her gleeful, boisterous cousin, and discovers this tall young man for the first time.

Their meetings are watercolor flourishes on her dull days, and _when you were seven you let Albus take the blame for blowing up cousin Dominique's stuffed dragon _at some point _when you were eight you dumped hot chocolate on my new dress with the pink ribbon_ that wicked smile finds a secret corner of her heart to crouch in, and Lucy realizes _when you were ten __you_ _shredded Madam Longbottom's pretty white primroses _that the niggling worm of shame and disgust _and you started to cry because she didn't get angry _that tiny fear _ she just told you _has been eclipsed, enveloped _how __they were the last thing she had left from her mother _by the precious perfume _oh james _of the coarse stubble under his chin.

_ james_

Lucy finds that James is still the James she left in England - daring, cheeky, determined - but somewhere, he's still the little boy who cried when he destroyed a woman's last memory of her mother. James is young, and nineteen and in love with himself, but somewhere, he's determined to fix every destroyed thing in the world, to put together every lost puzzle piece.

_james _

Somewhere, James falls in love with every broken-hearted girl he walks by.

__you__

Lucy isn't sure if it's easier or harder after that - after she realizes exactly what she's doing as she worms her way into the short gold dress she got with Sascha's excited encouragement, as she peers in her bathroom mirror and applies her onyx eyeliner in a thin, liquid line on her eyelids, as she walks into the bar with just the right rakish curl to her mouth, and lets his dark-eyed gaze rub up against the exposed skin of her back.

_you - you've always been there, haven't you?_

_this isn't supposed to happen, you -_

_this isn't fair._

_you're not supposed to be - _

_perfect._

_picture-perfect._

_oh james._

"It's funny -" she says to him, slightly drunk, stumbling as she lets him lug her up the stairs, "It's funny - how, how you run halfway across _the world_, how you - try to get away being broken by someone else's dreams, from _being alone_, and then you find - you find that -" And here is where they reach the door, where James whispers 'That?' and Lucy could have said anything, could have said "Nothing," could have walked inside.

But Lucy's still soaring, still falling, still drunk, still swooping with that feeling you get when you miss a step.

"- that he was the one you left behind all along."

There must be a moment there - maybe James stares at her, maybe he kisses her, or takes her hand, or touches her face - but the only thing Lucy remembers is waking up, makeup smeared into paintbrushed streaks on the pillows, the imprint of gold spangles pressed like snowflakes into her arm, morning filled by James' sleepy-eyed smile, the curve of his nose.

_Just like hers, oh god, just like hers -  
><em>

And, with that, her sweet, dreamy little bubble snaps - What has she even been thinking? How has she let it get so far? He's her cousin - her younger cousin - and she, and she,

She's screaming at him before he even knows it, and into the sight of his bewildered eyes, she spits out her anger, her shock, her fear -

"- how will they look at us? How will they even - they'll judge us - you don't know, you don't know what it's like - and, Merlin, James, what are we doing? What are we even doing?" She turns to him frantically, wildly, "Don't just stand there like this is okay - Don't just stand there like you can... fix this - you big - you _stupid_. We aren't - this... Don't just _stand_ there." She finishes desperately. "_Don't_ just stand there."

She crumples in on herself on the floor, hearing him move at last behind her. He curls himself around her, long legs framing her legs, arms wrapped around her shoulders. It's a pose that's almost friendly, almost brotherly - if not for the reflective way his thumb rests on her throat, how carelessly he drops a kiss on her hair.

"We'll get through it, Luce." he says. "We will."

It's such a James thing to say - Lucy runs a hand over his wrist and wishes she believed him.


End file.
